


No Kindness

by queenchingshih



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, High Chaos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenchingshih/pseuds/queenchingshih
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I'm tired of being afraid. When I'm empress, I'm going to make everyone else afraid instead. Just like you do, Corvo.' Emily Kaldwin becomes the empress she was never supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Kindness

 

 

  
_The music, it fades, the violence slows_  
_The darkness, it rises, as the sun goes_

*

Little Emily Kaldwin the first, empress in name if nothing much else. Seated up in her tower above the dying masses, unable to do a thing to help them. She wears white that is stained by blood that only those who care enough to look, see. The child empress who had to climb over a pile of bodies to reach her throne is not an empress of the people. She belongs only to herself and she is tired of being the pawn in the games of men. She is tired of being afraid.

*

Her coronation is a sombre affair and the crown only sits atop her head- too large and heavy to burden in truth- for the period of the ceremony before being snatched away and locked up until she's  _ready_. Emily thinks that the simpering lord who told her that is a fool. Before her world spiraled into ruin Emily might have outraged and cried that it wasn't fair, she was ready  _now_. But she's not that Emily anymore so she bites her lip and furies on the inside, determined to remain a mask of childish naivety. Emily is ready for rule now but she also is aware that to everyone else she is still an eleven year old girl, traumatized by the death of her mother and the events thereafter. Her new subjects stare at her in varying degrees of pity and wariness. She will let them think her unfit for now. For as long as needs be. 

But the day shall come when they hail her as empress, Emily the Wise, savior of them all. 

Corvo is standing a step behind her in the same fashion he has been since that miserable traitor Havelock fell to his death (nobody, not even Corvo, knows that he did not so much fall as he was pushed) and she was in his arms again. A comforting shadow. Now she looks up at him and smiles. He attempts to smile back at her but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. She wonders if on some level he knows. That he is the only one in all of Dunwall that understands her. If that is so Emily also wonders if he hates her like he now hates himself.

He takes her outstretched hand regardless.

*

Emily sleeps in her old room and bitterly thinks she should be in her mother's-the room of the empress. Because she is one, no matter how young she may be. If they are not going to allow her full control as empress the least they can do is let the privileges of the title be accessible to her. She feels stifled in this smaller room filled with her dolls and pictures and childhood memories.

She does not wish to be a child any longer. 

As it turns out sleep is not something that comes so easily to her anymore so she kicks the too heavy cover off her body and wanders on bare feet to her window. It's raining outside. Emily considers the idea that slowly emerges in her brain for a while before cracking open the window and sticking a pale hand out. She watches rain assault the skin of her hand, water seeping into the pores and is horrified to realise she cannot feel it. This absence of feeling is what propels her to climb out of her window and ever so carefully crawl up the white bricks of Dunwall tower until she finds a point to rest and take in the view as rainwater splatters her skin and  _does not wash her clea_ n.

That is how Corvo finds her as dawn breaks, drenched to the bone and gripping the brick of the tower so hard her fingertips have turned white. He blinks into existence beside her and one day she'll ask him how he does it (though she has an idea). But for now she only lets him tuck her under one arm and take her back to the room that should not belong to her anymore. 

*

Of course a new lord regent is appointed.  _'There has to be one'_  they say  _'Only until you're ready.'_  That word again, _ready_. Emily remembers the two lord regents that came before, Burrows and Havelock. She remembers Burrows' cruelty and thirst for power and Havelock's idea of justice and thirst for power and she remembers the desire so powerful it almost consumed her, for their heads to be served up to her on a silver platter.  

She takes one look at the new lord regent, who is to rule her empire, her people- and finds him _wanting_.

It is at his appointment ceremony-where he is taking centre stage as she is shafted to the side-when she decides that enough is enough. She is done waiting. Corvo is shadowing her as always so all she has to do is turn her head just so and catch his eye. He inclines his head and it is all the assurance she needs.

"No. Stop." It is surprise that she had spoken that makes her subjects pause and move their gazes from the not quite lord regent to her. "Bring me his head," the hall fills with gasps and Emily sneers at the courtiers. The man who came so close to gaining control of her empire pales significantly at her words. It is nice to be taken seriously. Corvo is behind the man in seconds, his sword to the oh so fragile skin of the man's neck. Corvo only hesitates for a second before slicing the head clean off. His blade is sharp and strong and does the job cleanly  as decapitation can be.   
  
The hall is silent now.

"From now on, I am your empress and ruler. No more regents, do you understand?" She speaks clear and loud, with authority and thinks her mother may have been proud of if she were not so ashamed of what Emily has become. "I want that in writing," she tells her steward as she steps around the lifeless body and dismembered head cluttering her marble floor, staining it red. The steward stares wide eyed at her but nods and bows all the same. She is pleased. Emily and her shadow leave the hall and her subjects part like the red sea for them, staring on with hearts beating in their throats. She finally has what she always wanted.

_Fear._  
  
Though it is not enough. 

*

It takes longer than she would have liked but she officially becomes empress of Gristol and all its lands on the morning of her twelfth birthday. Once the papers are signed and everyone has fled from the room, Emily sits back in the comfort of her leather chair and closes her eyes.

"I don't know how to run an empire." She breathes and hates herself for the truth of her own words. 

"Maybe you should have considered that before you took the lord regent's head." Corvo murmurs from behind her and she revels in the sound of his voice. He speaks so little. But when he does, his words are wise and true. Everything she is not. 

"You could have disobeyed me. I am a child after all. Empress, but still a child. You would have been within right." She reminds him. Her eyes are still closed but she hears him move to sit beside her. His movements are deliberate, she knows if he wanted, she would never him until it was too late.

"Are you attempting to shift your guilt on to me?" Her eyes snap open. He's peering at her out of the corner of his eye like he cannot actually bare to look at her. It  _hurts_. 

"No Corvo, I'm not." She says and closes her eyes again. Things are easier when sight is stripped away, she has found. 

"Then I did it because I cannot deny you anything." Corvo tells her and she wants more than anything to jump into his arms and promise to never make him do anything like that again. But she is an empress now and she does not wish to be false. Not with Corvo. "Happy birthday Emily." The man she thinks of as father whispers softly before leaving her alone with her thoughts, and she can find nothing happy about it. Not really.

*

Like she had promised in her letter, Emily has the collaged picture of Corvo she'd made- in what feels like a lifetime ago- transported to Dunwall Tower and put on display in her office. She views it daily and she knows it pains Corvo on some level to look at it but she refuses to take it down. She has not seen that mask since he saved her for the final time. It is a crude drawing but looking at it brings her comfort where it brings Corvo distress.

"Are you ashamed of what you've done?" She asks him one evening at dinner. They're eating rare, bloody meat that in the past she couldn't stomach. He does not answer for a long time, so long in fact that she believes he is ignoring her. But then he puts down his knife and fork and speaks.

"Are you not ashamed of what I've done?" The question in answer of a question throws her and she fiddles with the forgotten food on her plate whilst trying to form an answer.

"You have killed many people." It isn't a question. Nobody has ever told her but she knows. "People who deserved it and more," she continues slowly, watching for his reaction. There isn't one of course. His face has become more of a mask than the one depicted on her office wall ever was. "And people who didn't at all but were in the way?" This one she is less sure of but by the flicker in Corvo's eye, she knows it to be true too. "I'm not ashamed of you Corvo. They all deserved to  _burn_  for what they did. I only wish I could have seen it, helped you, myself." She spears a sad looking vegetable on her fork and misses the look of horror Corvo has painted all over his face, mask lying in tatters on the floor. 

*

She does not know how to run an empire so she (with the help of Corvo) gets others to teach her. Lords and ladies of Dunwall teach the little empress politics and etiquette, geography and manipulation. Every skill a ruler needs to manage her empire. She takes those skills and uses them. But it is not enough. It is one thing to rule, but ultimately it means nothing when she cannot protect herself. Jessamine ruled until she died, butchered like a pig in her own home by the man that sometimes still haunts Emily’s dreams. Emily loved her mother but she swears to never be left defenseless like she was. She knows a little about self defense from her childhood, from begged lessons off Corvo. But she needs to known more than Tyvian choke holds if she is to be able to protect herself when the day comes that Corvo no longer can. For the time being however she puts the thought to the back of her head, stores it away safely. If she is to learn protection she must first find somebody worthy enough to tutor her and that will take time and careful consideration. 

Then of course there is the problem of the plague. As she continues to rule and the years drag by, the plague continues to fester and kill off the populace. Emily employs philosophers and scientists, men and woman with bright minds from all over to try to develop a cure to no avail. The situation is reaching a new height of desperation the day Piero Joplin and Anton Sokolov show up at the gates of Dunwall Tower. Whilst staying with the loyalists as a child she had met Piero though never got to know him and of course, growing up Anton had always been there despite never being the friendliest of people. As they stand before her and tell her of how they left Dunwall by boat on the day that Corvo set out to the lighthouse and travelled across the sea to Serkonos first and then on to the Pandyssian continent where they had discovered the answer to all their problems at last- Emily notes how they don't look at her like everyone else does. They gaze upon her with respect and more importantly, loyalty. Still, she does not trust them. 

They've done what nobody else could, these two great and aging philosophers. Found a cure for the plague. Or so they claim. It remains to be seen.

"You need to prove to me that you have indeed found the cure, you understand?" She says as soon as Piero draws breath, interrupting whatever else he was about to say. Piero's mouth snaps closed and he and Anton share a look she cannot decipher. "I cannot afford to simply put the entirety of my faith in words alone." 

"Of course, empress, of course. We would only be too happy to demonstrate." Anton speaks up before dipping into a slight bow. He has to nudge Piero to do the same, who stumbles slightly over his own feet but Emily is satisfied for the time being. If this cure works perhaps everything can be fixed at last. Perhaps the people will finally love her. How could they not after she has provided them with such salvation?

"Good. Then do so."

*

She discovers the letter by accident. Corvo had been pulled into a conversation with the newly returned Anton and Piero and Emily had been able to slip away unnoticed for the time being. She loves Corvo and appreciates his protection but having an extra shadow grows wearisome at times. She aimlessly wanders the halls of the tower and her feet lead her to Corvo's room, right beside the empresses chambers- which she now inhabits as by her right- and pushes at the door until it creaks open. She's been in Corvo's room before of course, but never without him and so it makes her feel like a child again. Like she's doing something she shouldn't be. Before she darts into the room and closes the door she checks that the hallway is deserted and giggles to herself. Just like a child again.

The room is sparse of decoration or ornament. It is simple. A bed and a chest of draws with a wardrobe in the corner. The curtains at the window are part way drawn, allowing a thin shaft of light to shine across the floor. Emily stands with toes just outside its reach. Sidestepping the light, she glides over to the bed and sits down, running her hands over the linens. The fabric is not as soft as her own and the mattress is not as thick. Bare comforts. She sighs a little and begins to get off the bed when she spies a cream coloured corner of what appears to be paper sticking out of the edge of the mattress.

Emily becomes very still and strains her ears for any sound coming from outside before pulling it free and holding it between her fingertips. It is an envelope, with a letter within presumedly. Emily wonders why Corvo had hidden it beneath his mattress and why he’d been so careless to not make sure it was properly hidden if he did not wish it to be found. She presses her lips together and eyes the envelope.

The envelope is addressed,   _Corvo Attano_.  The handwriting is elegant in a way she herself has never quite been able to manage. She wonders if someone has been sending love letters to her Corvo, the thought makes her lips quirk slightly. Curiosity piqued, she pries open the envelope and draws out the letter within.

_I do not know why you let me live all those years ago and I am not writing to you now to thank you because in all honesty, you should have killed me but that is not what matters now. I am writing to warn you.  I have been contacted, several times, to hire a hit on your little empress. They want her dead. You’re lucky that I vowed to never again harm an empress, never again._

_I would tell the empress to sleep with one eye open if I were you._

_Daud._

Emily feels as though the blood running through her veins has turned to ice. The problem the contents of the letter holds barely registers with her. It is the first line. It is the name.  _Daud_. The assassin she thought long dead, whose life she has presumed for so long that Corvo took for taking her mother’s. An eye for an eye. She suddenly feels sick to the stomach. The paper crumples between her hands and tears sting her eyes. She angrily blinks them away. She has not cried since her mother died. She will certainly not cry now. 

Her head, her heart though- they ache at the sting of betrayal. 

Corvo finds her like that, sitting on the edge of his bed with the letter crumpled in her little fist. She knows he sees her fingers curled around the letter, the discarded envelope on the floor. She knows by the way his entire body grows rigid. But when he opens his mouth he speaks nothing of it.

“You shouldn’t run off like that Emily, it’s dangerous.” He says instead, a pretty frown painted on his face. A mask for the occasion. 

“Why? Because everyone wants me dead?” Emily says between measured breaths, addressing the warning of the letter. Corvo gulps visibly.

“It’s not everyone-” He starts to say, to reassure, to lie.

“I don’t want to talk about that Corvo.” She snaps with a tone that suggests argument will not be tolerated. Corvo knows her well enough (more than anyone in the entire universe...or at least she used to think he did) to pick up on it. 

“What do you want to talk about?” She has never heard him sound so meek. 

"Why did you spare him?" Clear, straight to the point, she does not speak his name but they both know it hovers in the air between them. A name that does not need to be said. 

"Emily..."

"Answer me Corvo! Why would you let the man who  _murdered my mother walk_ away with his  _life_?" Her fury is bright as she leaps to her feet. She wants to bang her fists against his chest, rip out his heart and squeeze until it aches as hers does now. Instead she only stands still, her fury crackling around her like a barely controlled blaze. 

"He was just a dagger in the hands of Burrows. He wasn't responsible. Not really..." Corvo mutters, turns his head away and Emily’s nostrils flare.

"When has that ever bothered you before? Everyone thought I didn't know, couldn't possibly understand. But I did Corvo! You killed so many, killed when you didn't have to! Why was  _he_  the exception?" She wants to understand. Above all else Emily wishes to understand why Corvo did it. Why he did anything during the whole terrible affair. 

"I can't talk about this with you." And he actually turns to leave. Emily darts forward, snatches his arm and with all her strength pulls him back around to face her.

"Don't you dare! I am your empress. I decide what you can and can't do.” She gnashes her teeth. “Now I'll ask you again. Why did you let this assassin keep his life when he made a living out of stealing other people's?"

"Because we're the same!” Corvo roars in a way she has never thought he could. “I looked at him and saw myself. A mirror image. I looked into his eyes and saw my own guilt reflected there." He continues more quietly and he’s finally being totally honest with her.

She hates him for it. 

"You're a coward." She sneers with so much hate that she even surprises herself. Corvo recoils from her as if she has slapped him. “ _I hate you_.” He makes an inhuman, animal noise from the back of his throat and it is as if she has stabbed him in the heart. In some sense perhaps she has. 

*

Piero and Anton demonstrate as promised. A glass screen is set up between Emily and the court and the subject to prevent any danger of infection and everyone waits with bated breath. They bring before her a plague victim still in the earliest of stages and inject the cure straight into the vein. It takes three and a half hours but after several tests and much assessing, the young woman is pronounced cured. The crowd gasps and applauds the genius philosophers and Emily smiles for the sake of her audience. But inside, whilst on some level relieved that there is a cure, she is comforted little still. Her people will not love her for this, they will whisper behind gloved hands that the child empress had little to do with it. That they should all praise Piero Joplin and Anton Sokolov alone for this triumph.

She does not incline her head to assess her lord protector’s reaction.

Later they all sit in her office to discuss how to go about distributing the cure. Her, Piero, Anton and Corvo crowd around her not quite large enough desk. A map of Dunwall and the quarantined areas is laid out over the polished wood surface and Emily stares at it in dismay. She had forgotten how much red areas made up her city. 

“At this time we do not have supply enough to distribute to everyone but with time...” Piero is saying, words leaving his mouth as quickly as they no doubt enter his brain but Emily holds a hand up and he falls silent. They all turn their eyes to her.

“No. We do not have time. This city needs purging. We do not have enough of the cure to spread around to everyone as you say, but we do not have time to wait around for more of this cure to be produced. The plague is spreading faster than ever. Those so far gone that they are considered weepers... Well, what is the point? They are dead already.” Emily is not blind, she sees the horror that creeps into both Anton and Piero’s eyes. She again does not look to Corvo for his reaction, already knowing what she will find. 

“But empress... Surely you’re not suggesting that we abandon half the city.” Anton says in that tone that begs to be listened to. See reason, logically if you do this..., you are a child and I am an adult and I know better than you-Is what he is really saying and if he wasn’t so brilliant she would have him killed. Old friend of her mother’s or not. 

“Oh we won’t abandon them. We can’t cure them but we can end their miserable existence.” Emily smiles then and the men who think they are superior to her exchange worry laden looks. She dismisses Piero and Joplin from the room soon after, leaving her and Corvo alone together. He does not say anything but she can feel the tension in the air where his unspoken words hang suspended.

“What is it? You do not approve of my plan? No, I didn’t think you would. Well, you know what?  _I. Don’t. Care_.”

Emily wishes she was telling the truth. 

*

The hoards of weepers are gathered up and herded onto two ships. There are so many and the great war galleys she had built are almost too small to house them all. Almost. She stands on a balcony off of Dunwall tower with Corvo at her back and watches the ships piled high with the diseased be released into the bay. Moments before the galleys crash into each other twin flaming arrows fly through the air and ignite both ships. They crash together and the red hot flames lick at everything they come across. Soon the night air is filled with smoke and the bright orange-red fire on the water. And the screams of course.

The weepers live up to their name and their anguished cries echo in the still night air. False. All of it. Dead men do not make a sound. 

“This isn’t right.” Corvo says. 

“How many of these weepers, these poor unfortunate souls who got in your way, did you kill when you wore your bone mask?” Emily asks, words phrased too lightly for their heavy burden. Of course, he has no answer for that. 

Emily is no longer concerned with the people loving her, after this they never will. But they will fear her more than they ever did, and  _fear is stronger than love_. 

*

Emily didn’t mean it when she told Corvo that she hated him, of course she didn’t.  So on the eve of her seventeenth birthday she forgives her lord protector. 

As they dine that evening, he appears even more miserable than usual. He pokes at his food but eats very little. Drinks mass quantities of wine and keeps his head bowed. If he had his way, Corvo would not dine with her at all but stand behind her and watch every bite pass her lips. But she will not have it. Emily sometimes thinks he resents her for this more than he resents her for anything else.

He hasn’t looked her in the eye for months and she likes to tell herself it is because he is ashamed of himself for not supporting her completely at every turn. The thought of him being ashamed of _her_  is too much to handle. 

“Look at me.” She commands. He does not obey straight away and seconds tick by into minutes and her grip tightens on the silverware to the point where her joints begin to hurt. Finally he looks up, meets her leveled gaze with his own. Emily does not like what she finds in his eyes. "Why do you look at me like you wish I was someone else?" 

"Because I do. This-who you now are, it isn't right. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I've done this terrible thing, the worst thing..."

"What? What have you done that you think so terrible?"

"I've created a monster." Corvo chokes out and there is a wetness around his eyes that startles Emily. She has never seen her protector cry before. She goes to him, drops to her knees beside his chair and takes his face between her hands, rests their foreheads together and stares into his dark eyes. Wild and wet and so filled with guilt. She tuts softly. Emily knows he's searching for a denial from her, something to absolve his guilt, save him. She  _is_  a monster. But then, she has to be in this world of theirs. It is a matter of being who she must to survive. 

"Shush, it's okay,  _because you're one too_." She can't give him what he's searching for, can't offer him the kind of comfort that is good and pure and full of redemption, but she can give him the next best thing. He stifles a sob and she wraps her arms around him, leans her head against his chest.

It's then that she hears the beating. Too loud to be Corvo's, much too loud. She frowns and leans backwards. She slips a hand inside his jacket, locates a hidden pocket and reaches inside. Her fingertips touch something cold and clammy, something that beats steadily under her touch. 

“Emily, no...” Corvo croaks but it is too late. Emily wraps her hand around the heart and retrieves it from the darkness of Corvo’s pocket, brings it into the light. 

**Author's Note:**

> *lyrics from Honor For All by Jon Licht and Daniel Licht


End file.
